On a recent Saturday morning, I was listening to the “Dining Around Town” show on KGO radio and Food Maven Joyce Goldstein was on the air. She was describing a pastry chef who spent hours and hours making a dessert that used all sorts of gadgets – a huge slicer, a dehydrator, gellan gum, instant freezer, etc. – while showing off his technical skills.

But the chef was far too technical. “Where’s the soul, man!” exclaimed Goldstein. She felt there was no passion, “no sensuality” to his cooking. She called it “machine food.”

The same can be said about some high technology marketing. Especially with products rich in technical depth and whose benefits are not intuitively obvious. Oftentimes, technology companies will take a “clinical” and (overly) technically accurate approach when describing their offerings, resulting in a lack of passion and emotional appeal to the buying customer. In these instances, the relevance and benefits to the buyer are noticeably absent – they’re either missing entirely, or buried in mounds of mind-numbing technical detail.

Technology is an incredible enabler, but sometimes we communicate in ways that fail to connect with the buyer. How would you assess your ability to communicate the value of your offerings?